


Take Me Instead

by welcometotheupsidedown



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Light Angst, Max has powers too, Max-centric, Minor Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, My First AO3 Post, Sad Ending, Season 3 AU, canon compliant until season 3 comes, fast burn, max is a queen, possible season 3 plot, pretty much everyones here, probably not tho, sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 18:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17627018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometotheupsidedown/pseuds/welcometotheupsidedown
Summary: Max Mayfield has a secret. One that could change everything, including Hawkins as we know it. Will this secret tear the Party apart? Or will it bring them closer together?I'm trash at summaries, please read it anyways.





	1. Deception

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first AO3 post, but not my first fic. This story, and most of my stories for that matter, have also been posted on my Amino. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Darkness fills the cool room, causing fearful trepidation as the girl moved closer to the closed door. Her eyes narrowed in concentration. The lock unhinged and she reached out, grabbing the cold handle and turning it slowly. The door swung open quietly, and she stepped through the threshold and into a long hallway. 

She was almost caught, only once. But the girl was quick. She used her powers to knock the guard onto the floor. He might have been dead, blood seeping out from his head. She wasn’t sure and she had no time to check. This was her only chance of escape. 

She moved with stealth, careful to not make a noise. Just a little farther. Her feet were still purple, bruised from the long hours of work. She carried nothing but the hospital gown on her back. The alarms were still blaring, they knew she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. 

Knowing that she only had minutes, she reached another door, this one leading to her freedom. Her life. The one that was taken from her. Anger building up inside her, she easily unlocked the door and stepped out into the light. The luminescence of the moonlight shining on her short bright red hair. 

————

“Max... Max..... Max!” 

2 years. 2 years Max had been reunited with her mother. Sometimes she wondered if telling her mother a lie had been a mistake. But her mother was a close-minded woman. She would never believe the truth. 

The truth was that Max had been abducted while living with her father. She had only been 5 years old. Her father, now long gone, had tried to save her. He died trying. 

Her mother had given her father full custody in the divorce. So when she escaped, she came up with a cover story. 

Her mother now believed that Max had been living with her father her whole life. When Max appeared on her doorstep 2 years ago, she told her that her father died. Technically not a lie. But the rest? Absolutely. 

Still, there were things Max had to hide. Like the tattoo on her left wrist, which caused her to wear more long sleeved clothes than she cared to. The emotional scars, built up from years of torment. And the guilt. Because there were others. Others she left behind. 

She was test subject 012. The lab she had lived in was located in Washington, where she knew that there were some still locked away. 013, her friend. 015, the one who had stood up for her. 016, who she was sure would be dead by now. She hadn’t met anyone with a smaller number than hers, which made her feel sick. There had to be more locations, and if there were more locations, that meant more possible test subjects. 

The memories haunt her still. They will never stop. But now she has to be strong. Starting a new school, in Indiana of all places, Max found herself somewhat relieved to have a fresh start. Even if it was in a place that could be considered the most boring town on the planet. 

She knew that it would be better for her. The further away from Washington she was, the safer.

Billy of course made her skate from the high school to the middle school. Of freaking course. As if this couldn’t be worse, she was put into a class with a teacher who literally looks like he could be a stand-in for Peewee Herman. 

When she walked in and forced her to stand in front of the class, she nearly lost it. 

Oh god, he’s still talking. Wait, did he seriously just use the phrase “curiosity voyage”?

“Maxine!” Okay, seriously?!

“It’s Max. Nobody calls me Maxine, it’s Max.” If someone called her Maxine, she was going to lose it on them. 

“Sorry..” but Max was already headed towards the only empty seat in the back of the room. Thank God.

She sat there the entire class looking out the window. She tried to avoid the stares, especially from a group of boys in the front who seemed very interested in her. 

Max never had much of a problem controlling her powers. She almost never used them. Only when she knew no one could see. She had to keep herself safe and there could be labs anywhere. She hoped there wasn’t one near here. 

At recess, Max noticed the boys watching her again. She confidently dropped her note in the trash, knowing they would try to find it. Stop spying on me creeps. 

Little did she know, these boys would soon be her friends. The first friends she’s had in a long time. 

When things started going south, with demodogs and the upside down, Max decided she had 2 choices. Tell them her true identity, or lie. She chose to lie. She couldn’t trust them yet. She lied about her past. She lied to Lucas about her father being in California. She lied about thinking they were crazy for believing in all this crazy stuff. It was all a part of her facade. 

She was almost exposed once. When they were all trapped in the Byers house and the demodogs were getting close, she was afraid she would have to expose herself by protecting everyone. She didn’t even know if she had that much power in her, though.

But then Eleven came. When Lucas told her about El, she knew she was one of the others. Max knew El was more powerful than her. Max has never flipped a van or killed a demogorgon. Max can’t find people using a bath or radio. But still they were almost the same. Their powers so similar. 

When the girl rejected her, she was disappointed but not upset. This girl had it worse than she had. And she had been out for less time than Max. She couldn’t blame her. Max felt for her. While Max’s hair had been cropped short, El’s had been shaved completely. The anger coming from El resonated in Max’s soul. 

She would find a way to tell her who she was. What she was. 

Max surprised herself when she kissed Lucas at the Snowball. She had never been kissed before and something just pulled at her. Her brain turned off and she kissed him. The boy was nice enough, she thought to herself. 

Max hadn’t had the chance to talk with El yet. But she would. And she knew when she did, she would have to come clean. To everyone. 

The time came six months later.


	2. Sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions of abuse that may be triggering. However, I don't think it crosses any lines, so the rating is staying the same. Please read at your own discretion!!

“I’m glad you wanted to see me,” Max said. They were in the cabin. Eleven was still on house arrest. Eleven had contacted Max a few days ago, via Mike, to ask if she could come over. 

“I want to apologize. I knocked you off your board. I thought you liked Mike,” El admitted. That threw Max off. Her? Like Mike? …Ew.

“What? No way! That lover boy is all yours,” Max winked at her. El giggled a little. 

“So we are... okay?” El asked. She was nervously fidgeting. 

“Yeah, no hard feelings... actually I have something I wanted to tell you... I’m Twelve,” Max whispered. Max held her breath. She wasn’t sure how Eleven would act because the Party, she more than anyone, enforced a strict Friends Don’t Lie policy. 

“Twelve?” El looked confused. 

“Yeah. I’m Twelve like you’re Eleven,” Max explained. She felt bad for the girl. At least Max’s lab had taught her enough to understand and be normal. But there was nothing normal about the girl sitting in front of her. Brenner had severely neglected Eleven’s social skills. 

Max saw that El was hesitant, so she pulled her sleeve up to show the tattoo. 012.

El seemed to understand this explanation. 

“Oh,” El said. She was very surprised, but she didn’t look happy or angry. She didn’t really have any emotion. “So you have... powers too?” 

“Yeah. Like yours but less powerful. I can’t do the cool stuff you’ve done. There’s no way I could have closed the gate. You’re amazing,” Max told her. 

El frowned. “I think I can help you be more powerful.” Max looked at her with confusion as the curly-haired girl began grinning.

That’s how Max and El ended up in the middle of the woods. 

“You’re going to knock down that tree,” El said. 

“What? El, there’s no way I can do that,” Max told her. 

“You can. You just have to focus. Focus on something that makes you angry. Something to motivate you. And transfer that energy into what you’re trying to do with your mind,” El smiled at her. “You can do this.”

Max stretched her hand out in front of her, focusing on the tree. She thought about her mother and step father. She thought about Billy. 

It wasn’t enough.

“Try again… think harder, concentrate. Feel it in your whole body,” El whispered from somewhere to her left.

She thought about being kidnapped and abused. She thought about the bad men who would beat her senseless, even back when she was small and weak. She thought about them hitting her over the head with a rod when she tried to resist. She thought about the time she had accidentally set her instructor on fire, and how they had tasered her repeatedly for it. She thought about the chronic nightmares and the PTSD. She thought about waking up covered in sweat and running to the bathroom to vomit. She thought about the panic attacks and the constant anxiety. She thought about her father’s death. Suddenly the tree was falling, easier than Max even knew she was capable of. 

“You did it!” El squealed, jumping up and down. El was a lot more hyper than her, Max realized. But she knew she had a new best friend. 

“Okay now it’s your turn,” Max said, smiling at her. 

El raised her hand and two trees fell to the ground simultaneously, leaving Max completely in disbelief. 

“Easy peasy,” El giggled at the look on Max’s face. 

——————

“So... no one else but me knows?” El asked, chewing on the last bit of her Eggo. 

“Nope. Didn’t know if I could trust them, but even now that I know that I can... it’s just...” 

“Scary?” El suggested. 

“Way scary,” Max agreed quickly. “I don’t know, even after everything it’s hard for me to... open up to them. To anyone really...”

“You’re opening up to me,” El pointed out, casually making two glasses of water float towards them and making it more difficult for Max to concentrate on the conversation. 

“Yeah, but only because you know what I’ve been through. We’re... sisters, kind of...” Max looked back up at El expecting her to frown at the idea of them being sisters, but instead El’s face is bright and she’s smiling. 

“Sisters.” El reaches her hand out and places it on top of Max’s, smiling at her. “For what it’s worth, they’ll be totally psyched to have another telekinetic friend.”

Max grinned at her. For someone who went through the worst of it, El was so kind and understanding. “Psyched? Where did you learn that word?”

“Dustin always says it, so I asked Mike and he told me,” El said.

“Of course he did,” Max laughed. Those two were inseparable nowadays. She’s surprised that Mike wasn’t interrupting their girl time. 

But of course, Mike ended up showing up no more than twenty minutes later.

———————

Telling El had been freeing. Max felt like she was finally gaining some normalcy, if that was even possible. She knew she would need to tell the boys soon. But she was still hesitant because after the boys, it was a landslide to everyone else that was involved on that cold November night. Hopper, Joyce, Nancy, Jonathan, Steve. They would all find out too. 

Max wanted that more than anything, but she was still terrified that something, anything would cause her to be discovered by some lab official and be taken back. And that was a very likely scenario. El was nearby. If the badmen were looking for El…. what if they found Max instead? 

Max held her breath as she skated to Lucas’s house, where they would bike the rest of the way to Will’s. And then…. everyone would find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is a very different story from what I normally write, but I am really enjoying it! Also, if you are wondering what the title of this story means, all will be revealed at the end of the last chapter!


	3. Friends Don't Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey AO3 peoples! You might have noticed that my chapters are unfortunately very short. Sorry about that, I'm working on it.

Max could feel the tension in her body rise as they got closer to the Byers home. She wanted to turn back. She wanted to scream. But she knew that she had to tell them. 

They were all like her family now. She had never expected this. Moving to Hawkins had been at the very bottom of the list of Things Max Wants To Do, but now? Now she had people she loved and who loved her back. She wasn’t Maxine, the child her mother didn’t care for, or the stepsister of an abuser. She was just Max.

She was happy… well, content. She could potentially see a great life for herself without telling them her secrets. But one thing was stopping her from keeping that big secret until the very end of her life. 

Friends don’t lie.

Lucas parked his bike out front of Will’s house along side of a few other bikes. Everyone was already here. 

Lucas seemed to notice his girlfriend’s unusual shyness and asked her, “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, uh, I just have some stuff I want to tell you guys,” she answered. He looked confused by didn’t press it. They walked up to the door and into the threshold. 

The others were already snacking on chips and pretzels, or in Dustin’s case Nilla Wafers. When El saw Max, she surprised everyone except for Mike who already knew they made up, and gave her a huge hug.

Max felt a whisper on the inside of her head and realized that El was talking to her.

You can do this.

Max let things settle in for a little while before taking a deep breath and standing up in front of her friends.

“I have to tell you guys something,” Max said, shaking. El reached up and grabbed her hand in support. The boys just looked confused.

“So, I haven’t been completely honest with you guys, and I’m sorry for that, but I had to make sure I could trust you before I told you the truth…” she began. “My father isn’t back in California…. because he’s dead. I didn’t tell you because he died trying to save me… from the badmen. When I was five-years-old, I was abducted and taken to a lab in Washington. I was given the number twelve, which is tattooed on my wrist.” She pulled her sleeve up then, showing them the tiny numbers reading 012. “Two and a half years ago, I escaped. I found my mother in California and kept a low profile. Then we moved here, and I thought I would be getting away from all this drama from the lab, but turns out I just coincidentally moved to town where it all started. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was scared. I’m sorry,” she finished.

The silence that followed was only a couple seconds long, but it was deafening.

“You… you have powers, too?” Dustin was the first to speak. 

Max, instead of answering, simply raised the coffee table a foot off the ground. She set in back gently and felt a small trickle of blood come out of her nose. She wiped it with her sleeve.

“No way,” Will whispered. Dustin and Will were now looking very excited at having another telekinetic friend. 

Mike, on the other hand, didn’t seem so happy. “So, wait. You have powers but you didn’t offer to help El close the gate?” He didn’t ask in a mean way. He was just curious. After all that had happened, Mike and Max had ended up becoming good friends. 

“I’m not as strong as she is. Like I said, they only started working with me at the lab when I was five, and I haven’t been doing very much heavy lifting with my powers for the last couple years,” Max answered. “I know, I’m not as cool as she is.”

“Well, you have powers and the rest of us don’t, so that makes you cooler than us,” Mike replied, grinning at her. Max smiled back.

She looked over at Lucas, who looked… hurt? 

“Should we… go talk?” she asked. The others were looking a little uncomfortable with the tension that now filled the air of the Byers’ living room.

“Yeah, I think we should,” Lucas said, walking out to the porch. Max quickly followed.

Max waited for him to talk first.

“Why… why didn’t you tell me? I just, I don’t understand why you didn’t want to tell me,” he admitted.

“I wanted to. I was scared, and I wasn’t sure I could trust you—“ Max started, but Lucas interrupted her.

“You weren’t sure if you could trust me? Are you kidding, Max? After everything we’ve been through with the Upside Down, you honestly didn’t know?” Lucas was almost shouting now.

“No, Lucas! I had known you for a week when that happened!” Max could feel her blood pressure rising.

“Well that was six months ago! Why couldn’t you tell me?” Lucas’s outrage was ridiculous.

“I did, I’m sorry it took me so long, but I did,” she answered.

“No. I meant me. Just me. Not the others. You could have told ME a long time ago,” Lucas told her.

“Lucas, El is in hiding, and I probably should be too. If they are trying to find her, what if… what if they find me too? Telling you guys makes it more dangerous for all of us,” Max said.

“Max, you lied to me! About your dad, about everything! How could you do that, Max? Friends don’t lie!”

“Well, it looks like ex-girlfriends do,” Max whispered, leaving Lucas standing on the porch alone.

———————

Back inside, the others were trying not to eavesdrop, but failing miserably.

When Max came back inside, they tried (unsuccessfully) looking nonchalant. 

“El, do you think Hopper can take me home?” she asked. El nodded and stood up. Hopper was in the kitchen with Joyce. 

After the girls left, and Lucas had left too, the other boys didn’t feel like having fun without them, so Mike and Dustin decided to leave too. 

For the next couple of weeks, Lucas and Max couldn’t stand be hang out together, so the party only hung out with them one at a time.

The group didn’t feel right without all of its members. 

Eventually, Max and Lucas would be able to be in the same place again, but they just needed some time to themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, sorry Lumax shippers, but don't worry! This isn't the end for them. ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	4. Happy (is a lie)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is kind of a filler, but next chapter is when the real excitement starts. So enjoy the fluff!

The Party was ready for summer. Of course, everyone else was too, but this summer just felt special. Like something huge and exciting was going to happen. 

Well, something sort of was happening. El was being released from her yearlong sentence a little earlier than planned. This was enough excitement to wound up all of the kids. They could finally show El what it was like to be a kid, and have lots of fun. 

But of course, no one was more excited than Mike Wheeler. 

“And we can take you to the carnival, we can go swimming, and—“ Mike had been talking nonstop about summer since Hopper was coaxed into El’s early release. 

“Okay! Okay! I know, Mike!” El said, giggling.

“Sorry, I was getting carried away, wasn’t I?” he apologized.

“Yes, but you’re my favorite so its okay,” El smiled at him. 

“El, you’re my favorite, too,” Mike said, getting red-faced. “I—I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she answered without hesitation. It was almost as if she had been waiting on this.

“You… you do?” Mike asked. 

“Yes of course, Mike. You’re one of my soulmates,” El laughed.

“One of them?” he was confused.

“Yeah, you can have more than one. You’re my ro-man-tic(?) soulmate,” El began, stumbling over the slightly newer word in her vocabulary. “Will is my pla-pla-pla?”

“Platonic?” Mike helped.

“Yes, pla-ton-ic soulmate because we’ve survived the same stuff in the Upside Down, and Max is my emotional soulmate,” El said, matter-of-factly.

“Emotional soulmate?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, our souls are made up of the same emotions…”

———————

“Steve!!” 

“Yeah, yeah, what do you want Firestarter #12?” Steve asked, seeing as Max was about to jump the counter at Scoops Ahoy.

“Steve!” she hissed. “You know you can’t call me that in public! People could hear you!”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, its almost closing time, so there’s no one here,” Steve mock-whispered at her.

“Doesn’t matter. I need your help with something. Can I please, pretty please hide behind your counter?” Max asked in a rush.

“Why?” Steve looked concerned at her paranoia.

“Because Billy is here, and if he sees me, he’ll tell my mom that I was here. I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be at some random-girl-whose-name-I-made-up’s house,” she whispered.

“Okay, okay, hurry,” Steve said, ushering her into the counter area and moving a couple of things to make room for her. “I’ll tell you when he’s gone.”

It was ten minutes later, when he finally gave her the clear.

“Thank you, Steve,” Max said, giving him a big hug.

“No problem, Twelve. We gotta stick together. All of us,” he answered. Max grinned.

———————

The summer started just like any other. Kids running around, people getting ice cream and spending hours outside. The Party? They were spending much of their time introducing El to new things. 

They went to the pool and took long bike rides to the edges of Hawkins. Mike taught El how to ride a bike, and Max taught her to skate. 

This was about to be the best summer of their lives, the summer of ’85, or so they thought. But there was just one thing that needed fixed first…

“Hey, Max,” Lucas appeared at her window, one day.

“Lucas? What are you doing here?” she walked over to him.

“I—I don’t really know. I just, I’m sorry for the way I acted before.. I miss you…” Lucas admitted. 

“And so you came over here to apologize in the hopes that we’d get back together?” Max jokingly asked.

“Well, I mean…. Yeah,” Lucas said, looking down.

Max laughed. “Oh come on Stalker, you’re not serious.”

“Yeah, I am actually. Max, I think I love you,” Lucas replied. 

Max froze. “You—you what?” 

“I love you. I was an idiot, before,” he told her.

Max looked at him, expecting him to take it back. Feeling her emotions building inside her, she answered, “I love you, too.”

Max grinned to herself. If she was being completely honest, she loved the life she had right now. She had incredible friends, including her savior Steve Harrington and her (loving) boyfriend Lucas. She felt safe from the badmen. And even though she still had to hide from Billy, he hadn’t laid a hand on her since she had threatened him with that bat. 

She was so very grateful for the way things played out for her. 

Too bad it was all about to go up in flames.


	5. Return

July 4th 1985 would soon become a day the party would remember as one of the worst days of their lives. 

It started out like any other, the kids so eager to get out of the house and bike to some of their favorite places. By the late afternoon, they would pile up in Jonathan’s car and go to Starcourt mall and get their ice cream from Steve. 

That’s when it happened. While the six kids plus Jonathan and Nancy were sitting at Scoops Ahoy, eating their favorite ice creams, someone walked through the main doors of the mall. 

Someone who was supposed to be dead.

El felt him before she saw him. An increase in the sensitivity of her powers told her something was wrong. Very wrong. 

He had finally came for her.

“We have to go,” El said, urgently, dropping her ice cream.

“What? Why?” Nancy asked.

“Papa. He’s here,” El whispered. Everyone at the table’s eyes widened. 

“Come on, lets go,” Jonathan said, ushering the kids towards the exit for Scoops Ahoy. Mike grabbed El’s hand, feeling a fierce need to protect her. 

They rushed towards the exit, but Lucas, who was at the front of the group stocked dead in his tracks. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said, holding a hand up. “I see him, we won’t be able to make it out without him seeing us.”

Dustin swore.

“What if we gave El a disguise?” Max suggested.

“That wouldn’t work,” Mike answered. “He’s seen all of us before. He knows she would be with us. If we disguised her, we’d have to disguise ourselves too.”

“Okay, well he doesn’t know me,” Max spoke. “What if I were to distract him so you could all make a break for it?”

“No! Max, he could hurt you!” El teared up.

“He doesn’t know who I am, El. I am the only one who can do this. Besides, if anything happens, I have my powers. And thanks to you, I can use them so much better,” Max reassured her. 

“Okay, just be careful,” El told her, giving her a quick hug.

Max left, walking directly to Dr. Martin Brenner. 

“Excuse me sir,” she said, getting his attention, and positioning herself so that he was facing the opposite of where the party was going to be escaping.

“Can I help you?” He asked.

“Um, yeah. Have you seen a guy wearing a jean jacket and jeans. He has his hair in a mullet, it’s light brown. He’s my step-brother and I can’t find him,” Max told him. She kept her eyes focused on his, but could see the figures of her friends running out through the doors. Just a few more seconds…

“Hmm, no I haven’t seen him. I’m actually looking for someone myself. She has short brown hair and brown eyes. She’s my daughter,” Brenner told her.

“Sorry, I haven’t seen her,” Max said, releasing a breath of relief as her friends were finally out of sight.

“Oh, but I think you have,” Brenner smiled at her. “Maxine Mayfield, correct? That was a very noble thing you just did there.”

Max gulped, she was in trouble. 

Brenner leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Did you honestly think I wasn’t in contact with the Washington lab when you escaped? And I have been keeping tabs on dear Eleven for months. You were never safe.” 

Max made a move to run, but was grabbed by two men who came with Brenner. 

“Now, now, take us to your friends, and we won’t hurt you. If you don’t? Well, you’ve been out of the lab for almost three years. You’re useless to me now. I have no reservations against terminating you.”

Max, on the other hand, was already plotting her escape route. She waited until they were nearly a secluded area of the mall, then she pushed the two men holding onto her into the walls on either side of her with her powers, knocking them both unconscious. 

Then she turned to Brenner, who looked astonished, and said “Trust me. I am NOT useless.”

With a final push of her powers, she threw Brenner into a nearby closet and locked the door. She ran for her life out to the car, where the party was waiting.

She climbed in and Jonathan didn’t hesitate before pulling the car out and driving down the road, speeding the whole way back to the Byers’s house.

“He knew who I was,” Max told them, when they had made it back to safety. “He knew exactly who I was…. This isn’t over. He’s going to keep trying to find you, El. He’s not going to stop until he has you.”

El seemed to understand what Max was implying. She nodded. 

“We have to kill him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. The Battle of Starcourt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this whole thing. I did just post the entire series all at once, so if you made it this far, thank you!! Enjoy the final chapter!!

They knew what they had to do. And it surely wouldn’t be simple. Brenner would probably have more men with him than the two Max had dealt with. 

Max wasn’t sure how long it would take for Brenner to escape from the closet, but she knew for sure that once he was out, he was coming for them. She had knocked him unconscious, so she hoped that would gain them some extra time.

Too bad for him, they were gonna be coming for him first. 

It took some quick thinking, and getting the adults involved first before they could execute the plan. 

Basically, they were going to wait for the mall to close, and get in using Eleven’s powers to unlock the door. Steve was also there keeping watch to see if Brenner would try to leave. If he did, they would have to rethink a different plan, but for now, they knew he was still there. 

Eleven and Max were going to corner him, and the other’s were going to be providing backup and lookout services. 

But just as things were about to get started, there was a problem. A big one.

“Excuse me, what are you people doing breaking in?” A man in a military suit had spotted them, and he wasn’t alone.

“They aren’t with the military,” El whispered to Max. “They’re with Papa. I recognize some of them.”

“We received a call to come check out some mysterious happenings at this mall tonight. Some one tipped us off, saying it was essential we have as many men here as possible…. I was not expecting the huge threat to be a washed up chief of police and his horde of teenagers,” one of the men said, his eyes landed right on Eleven.

“How did you know I was chief of police,” Hopper said, coming to the same realization Eleven had.

The man didn’t answer.

Suddenly all the militia were grabbing the kids. Someone snuck up behind Hopper and hit him on the head to knock him out. They had Joyce in a tight hold as well. Max was just glad they had left Jonathan and Nancy in the getaway car. 

Max was being held by a man pointing his gun at her. She could see that they were doing the same to Eleven.

But the two girls had been prepared for something like this.

Eleven looked at Max, and winked. That was the signal. 

Max, using her powers, caused a loud screech to erupt from the other side of the mall. (This was a power unique to Max that they had discovered while testing Max’s powers one day. She could make people hear voices.) This distracted the men momentarily, taking their guard off of the two girls.

Then simultaneously, they snapped the necks of the two men holding them, and ran further into the mall. They had to find him.

They heard no struggle coming from their friends, no one tried to shoot them. They were supposed to be kept alive. 

“We need to split up, if you see him, don’t hesitate. Kill him,” Eleven told Max. “I don’t care if I’m the one to kill him or not, I just want him dead. After he’s gone, we go save the rest of the party.”

And so Eleven went to the left and Max went to the right. 

Max was nervous. This was the first time she would be using her powers to kill someone. Eleven told her what it was like to kill the badmen, how it felt good and bad at the same time. But she knew this was the only way.

Max couldn’t find him anywhere, which meant Eleven had either found him and killed him or he had found Eleven and was in the process of taking her away. She decided to turn back and look for Eleven, just to make sure she was safe. It had been too long.

She made it back to where they had left the rest of the party. But they were no where to be found. In fact, she hadn’t seen anyone or heard anyone in forever. 

The mall was empty.

She opened the door to the outside to see a horrific scene. 

Helicopters and hundreds of so-called military. Her friends still being held back. And right in the middle of it all, was Brenner face-to-face with Eleven.

He turned and saw Max. “Ah, I was wondering when you would find us?” he sneered.

Eleven had tears in her eyes. She couldn’t kill him right now, there were too many people here. She would be killed or taken away as a weapon by Brenner’s right hand man. 

Two men grabbed Max by the arms and pulled her closer to the group.

“Oh, my dear Eleven, how naughty you have been. I am very disappointed in you. You should have been with me all this time, where you belong. You will have to be punished,” he said.

Mike shouted, but was quickly silenced by the man holding him.

“Come along, dear, its time for us to go,” he gestured for four more military men to come forward. They surrounded Eleven and began ushering her towards one of the helicopters. 

The others were beginning to panic and just as Eleven was about to step foot into the helicopter, Max shouted.

“Stop!”

“Why should I listen to you? Just because you can throw me into a closet doesn’t make you useful,” Brenner spat out.

Max stepped towards him, and using her powers, made the entire mall building shake, as if there was an earthquake. She smirked at the look that crossed his face. 

She gave one last look to her friends, glancing at Eleven last, and took a deep breath. She turned her gaze back to Brenner.

“Do you still think I am not useful?” she smirked.

“You have become something I have always wanted. I can see that now, but why would I need two of you? You would plot against me just as you did tonight,” he asked.

“I’m not saying to take both of us. I’m saying I’m willing to give you what you want. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.”

“Take me instead.” 

Brenner simply nodded. 

For the greatest sacrifice made, is one to save a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.


End file.
